In Other People's Bathrooms
In her piece In Other People's Bathrooms, Alexine Chanel catalogues personal experiences and private moments; she thus provides her audience with an opportunity to relive them through the experience of their representation.
Fascinated by the tenuous border between public and private space, Chanel documents what is usually not seen. By publicly presenting this sequence of photographs, she re-defines the 'sheltered space' of the bathroom as 'a laboratory' and a 'sexual space'. In observing her body, we are watching a spectacle in reverse, from her own perspective.
The typographically loaded definitions that frame the artist's photographs punctuate the semantic offshoots. The juxtaposition of linguistic and iconic messages leads to new connections. However, whilst a definition usually attempts to clarify the essential characteristics of a subject, Alexine Chanel uses its contiguousness with the image to multiply the network of meanings.
With a text by Jean-François Thomasset.